Airplanes(3:58)

This is the third single from Los Angeles based indie rock band Local Natives’ debut album, Gorilla Manor. The band comprises keyboardist Kelcey Ayer, guitarists Ryan Hahn and Taylor Rice, bass player Andy Hamm and drummer Matt Frazier. They all share the vocal and songwriting duties.

Rice explained the song to Q magazine: “It’s actually about Kelcey’s grandfather. He died when Kelcey was two years old, so he only knew him through stories that his father told. It’s funny because people think it’s a romantic song about a girl. It’s about his grandfather.”

Gorilla Manor is named after the house in Orange County the band shared when they made the album. “It was insanely messy and there were always friends over knocking around on guitars or our thrift store piano,” Hahn said on the band’s record label’s website, “it was an incredible experience and I’ll never forget that time.”

Some strange jeers can be heard at the beginning of the song. Ryan Hahn explained to Spin magazine that, “when we started working on it, we thought it was gonna be this sentimental, Coldplay-ish thing.” So he and his bandmates would boo Kelcey Ayer, who wrote this tune during practice, and sneaked into the studio to add their groans to the track.